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Digital Photography & Imaging - Final Project

Week 9 - Week 14 / 26.05.2021 - 30.07.2021
Tow Wan Tian / 0342765




Week 10 / 02.06.2021

Part 1 - Idea Development

Biography / About Myself

Wan Tian is a city girl born and raised in Kuala Lumpur. Currently majoring in Bachelors of Education at Taylor's University. Because of the influence of her mother, she has had a great interest in art and handicraft since young. Later on, in life, she picks up the interest in graphic design, and therefore she takes Creative Media Design as her minor. She has many inward feelings and thoughts but is working to be a bit more expressive through the little design works she does in her pastime. Subtle is probably the best word to describe her way of living. 

Most likely going to be a teacher/educator in the future, but she doesn't want to limit herself to a single possibility. She might be exploring different jobs since she is always keen to learn new things and likes to give herself the challenge to pick up a new skill. However, presently, she is eagerly walking on the path to self-discovery and trying different methods to know herself better. 

To be honest, she does not do dreams as dreams are always mysterious, vague and unreachable to her. She prefers goals though. Every time she achieves her goals, either big or small, she gets a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment and those are what keeps her going. Also, she is hungry for acknowledgement for what she accomplished. Quite shallow, isn't it? So what? It works for her. 

She can see herself creating designs that show viewers who she is from various perspectives and different settings. She wants to explore the relationship between how she views herself and how others perceive her. 

Design Statement

Since my current interest is self-discovery, I want to portray how I view myself in two different ways, one showing who I am (my present state), another one showing the imagination of who I want to be visually (wannabe).

The design would be done as a collage that presents both my present state and my wannabe imagination. My present state would be shown with me wearing casual mono colour clothing and glasses, bare face, hair undone, etc. This is to show how I present myself most of the time, suggesting that I have a boring and dull appearance. My 'wannabe' state would be the complete opposite, shown with colourful and stylish outfits, exaggerated makeup and fancy hairstyle. Two states should contrast each other.

I want people to see my struggle with balancing my true self and the alternative persona (wannabe) that I want to create and present to others. Hoping that the design can convey the idea of 'comfort versus effort' - do I want to stay in my comfort zone and continue with my usual attire? Or do I want to make the effort to change my appearance to become visually appealing and conform to society's beauty standards? It should also represent themes such as body image, self-esteem, self-love, etc. 

My motto - LOVE YOURSELF


Mood Board

Figure 1. Collage by Felipe Guga from flickr.com

Figure 1.1 Collage found on Pinterest

Figure 1.2 Collage by Klawe Rzeczy from Behance.net


Week 11 / 09.06.2021

Part 2 - Design Direction

Sketches

Figure 2. Sketch 1

Digital Poster

Progress

Attempt #1

Before creating the poster, I must first gather all the needed materials, including photographs of myself. With the help of my newly bought tripod, I set it up and placed it on a table to take photos of my upper body. I posed according to the sketch and since I don't have a large picture frame/mirror, I used an A4-sized sketchbook as my prop. Actually, as long as the object has a flat surface and is held vertically,  the prop was not that important as it would be masked out later in production. I tried with a few different positions and distances to see which one had the best result.



From top left to bottom right: Figure 2.1 to 2.4 Taking several photographs with different poses

If I remembered correctly, Figure 2.1 was selected to be further developed as the main object of my poster. Next, I moved on to compile some images that would be used in the poster such as a picture/photo frame, a cat and some decorative elements. 

Then, I moved on to Photoshop to begin designing my poster. I considered Figure 2.5 as the initial draft and I wasn't all satisfied with the results. I didn't like the arrangement of design elements as they seemed disoriented and the colours looked off despite using analogous colours. The whole design just didn't come out to be visually appealing so I stopped at this stage and decided to start again. 

Figure 2.5 Digital poster 1

Feedback from Lecturer

Mr Martin's impression of my design was that he felt the piece was rather incomplete, which I agreed with as well. After listening to the explanation in Figure 2.5, Mr Martin suggested placing my body (main subject) in the middle with the face completely covered by the cat and the frame. He found it odd with the head peeking out from the side and thus suggested trying again without showing the head. He said that this would resonate with the intention better. 

Attempt #2

Taking Mr Martin's feedback into consideration, I went to Pinterest to look for more inspirations. Then, I came across this image that has a similar approach to what I had in mind:

Figure 2.6 Image found on Pinterest

Since the main subject is standing in the middle of the composition, I thought I could replicate a similar approach and create the poster using symmetrical balance. With this idea and image in mind, I began taking more photos of myself and this time I was dressed more formally as my torso would be shown in the poster. 

Figure 2.7 Posing for photos

After taking a good amount of photos, I filtered out some that were blurry or and chose one that I believed had the best result (Figure 2.7). 
Then, I inserted the image into Photoshop and began editing. 

Figure 2.8 Step 1 - Masking

Figure 2.9 Step 2 - insert edited layers and colour the background

First, I masked my photo and then copied the masked layers of the cat and the picture frame from the previous draft and pasted them in this composition. Next, I chose a soft pink as the colour of the background. The negative space in the picture frame didn't look good to me so I tried enlarging the cat to cover it up. However, the cat seems disproportionate after enlarging it and thus, I had to undo it and try some other ways to deal with the negative space. 

Then, I thought of placing an image behind the frame to act as its background and I found this image of clouds that seemed fitting. After inserting the image, there seemed to be more depth in composition so I decided to keep it this way. Then, a random thought came to my mind: how about placing another image of clouds and sea behind the main figure? Seemed doable. 

Figure 3. Step 3 - Insert background image and heads, adjust hue and saturation

Even though Mr Martin advised me to exclude the head in his feedback, I still wanted to keep it as an element in the design. Hence, I added another head on the other side to balance off the whole composition. I took a break and came back to realise that the colours of each object did not match well with each other and thus, I made a few adjustments on the hues and saturation. 

Figure 3.1 Step 4 - Insert decorative elements

I found this image of flowers that matches well with the overall colour scheme of the design so it was incorporated as a decorative element. The Elliptical Marquee tool was used to create circular cutouts of the image. Then, I duplicated the cutouts and transformed their scale, making some smaller and some larger. Next, the circles were arranged as shown in Figure 3.1. I have also added a decorative collar and bowtie for the cat. 

The bottom part of the composition seemed empty when compared to the top part. Continuing with the theme of clouds, I masked another image of clouds and layered it on top of the body. I also adjusted the blending mode from normal to overlay for a different effect. 

Figure 3.2 Step 5 - Insert overlay layer
Figure 3.3 Digital poster 2

When I was done with all the editing in Photoshop, I exported the composition into After Effects and began editing. My initial plan was to create a parallax with the main subject (cat head with body) moving forward and the background moving backward. It was at this point that I realised that the cloud layer would be jaring if it was edited to move with the main subject so I excluded it and added two white fluffy clouds floating into view from both sides. 

After the main subject, clouds and background have come into place, the heads would peek out from the back, followed by the circles coming out from the back as well. The music used was the intro of the instrumental of the song 'summertime' by 'cinnamons x evening cinemas'. I tried my best to sync up the animation with the progression of the audio and I think the result came out to be pretty satisfying. With the addition of the audio, the circles reminded me of vinyl records and thus, I added the rotation effect to every circle to make them resemble vinyl records even more. 

Figure 3.4 Animating in After Effects


W12 / 16.06.2021

Part 3 - Execution and Post Production

Figure . Final Design Outcome Still - 'Wannabe'

Figure  Final Design Outcome Animation - 'Wannabe'


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